(Taiwan) BioBusiness Asia 2005 opens with global industry issues under the spotlight :: BiotechEast - Taiwan and China biotechnology, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, ^¤å½s×, ^¤å×§ï ::

(By David Silver, BiotechEast)

20 July, 2005
With an impressive range of international speakers gathered to discuss issues facing the life sciences industry, BioBusiness Asia 2005 opened in Taipei on Wednesday to an audience of biotechnology executives, investors, scientists and policy makers.

Rob Breckon, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, MDS Inc., speaking at the BioBusiness Asia 2005 conference, in Taipei's Grand Hyatt Hotel, on Wednesday, 20 July, 2005.

Organized by the Taiwan Bio-Industry Organization, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the Development Center for Biotechnology (DCB) and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), BioBusiness Asia has over the four years since its inception managed to attract speakers of the highest caliber, including such industry notables as author and biotech pioneer Dr. Cynthia Robbins-Roth; founder of life sciences services giant MDS Inc., Ron Yamada; and Ronald Cape, founding president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

In the wake of several high profile drug recalls and scandals in the big money world of Big Pharma, the theme for the morning session, 'Biotech Global Trends,' promised to take a up close look at both opportunities and pitfalls within the drug discovery and development process, and the audience was disappointed.

Speaking first at the morning session was Rob Breckon, Executive Vice President at MDS Inc. Introducing the company, Breckon explained that Canadian-based MDS provided products and services in a surprisingly wide range of sectors, ranging from diagnostics and instruments to pharmaceutical services.

"It's been said that we are not focused, and our share price often gets punished because of it. But with the mix we have, we can handle volatility within any given sector," claimed Breckon. MDS worked to identify niche areas and become the number one player in each area, he said.

So far, the strategy appeared to have worked well for the company, with steady and increasing growth to date and revenues booked at C$1.8 billion for 2004. The pharmaceutical services sector alone was a C$500+ million operation for the company, with 4,000 employees in this field in 43 locations in 25 countries.

Asia was one area MDS had a particularly active and growing presence, with the rewards beginning to materialize.

"In five years 25 percent of our business will come from Asia," said Breckon. However, he admitted that strategy for Asia was still a work in progress.

As well as talking about his company, Breckon's presentation examined trends in health care, including the influence of the rapidly aging population in developed countries and the ever-increasing demand for top-end treatment driving up health care costs across the board. Breckon also looked at the hot topic areas of biomarkers, so-called 'medical tourism'--where Thailand is the market leader, he said--and outsourcing.

Breckon also presented his analysis of several Asian locations for their competitive advantages and future prospects, including India, Singapore and Taiwan. For Taiwan, he gave a frank assessment of the efforts to date to promote the island as a life sciences hub for the region.

"Taiwan is still seen by the overseas pharmaceutical industry as being an uneven playing field. In addition, there are IP concerns, it takes a long time for existing drugs to be approved for the local market, and the incentives for the foreign investor are not as attractive as they are for India or Singapore," he said. On the positive side, he did say it appeared that progress was being made to address these issues, and regarding the company's long presence on the island, Breckon said the he was "thrilled to be operating in Taiwan."

Speaking next was Dr. Ted Love, president and CEO of Nuvelo, Inc., a US-based genomics company. Having spent six years previously at Genentech, Love was well known in industry circles for his success in turning Nevelo around from a precarious financial position to becoming a stable, well-capitalized company.

Love's message was taken from his own experience in an IP-rich but product-poor genomics company, in that "genes are not enough"; in other words, IP has no value unless it is defending an asset that has value.

"You must understand the relative value of your current assets. [Genomics companies] tend to overvalue their IP," he said.

Dr. Ted Love, President and CEO of Nuvelo.

Love examined the building up of the bubble in financing for genomics companies, leading up to the bubble bursting in 2002, and how expectations from genomics breakthroughs were in hindsight vastly unrealistic.

"People thought that Big Pharma would pay for it all," he said.

Successful genomics companies do exist; it's just that they're the ones that keep their eyes firmly on the prize.

"Genentech was worth US$2 billion when I joined them. Ten years on, it's worth around US$90 billion. This has come from a focus on drug development, not drug discovery," claimed Love.

Rounding off the morning session was Dr. Whaijen Soo, Senior Vice President of medical research at Biogen Idec Inc., the world's third largest biotech company behind Amgen and Genentech.

Soo talked about evolving issues in global drug development, and how specifically Biogen was dealing with this issues. He examined the growing industry-wide attention to outsourcing and 'offshoring;' meaning outsourcing overseas.

"When we decide to outsource offshore, it is a very systematic process. We map out every part of every step [of the drug development process] before making the decision. And as we get historical data [after the fact], we analyze it to help us plan and allocate resources better for future projects," he said.

Biogen was involved in a high-profile drug recall earlier in the year, with the withdraw of its popular multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri in February due to reports of heart failure in patients taking the drug lopping 40 percent off the company's market capitalization.

Talking about the incident, Soo said that after the news broke the company lost US$10 billion in value in just one day.

"Both cases [of heart failure] happened in patients already two years into the program. Well, we withdrew the drug, because the patient is our ultimate concern. Maybe Big Pharma wouldn't have made the same decision [as we did to withdraw the drug], who knows? While we gained a lot of kudos for our decision, we took quite a hit from it financially," said Soo.

Following the morning session was the lunch plenary session, with a presentation by Mary Walshok, Associate Vice Chancellor at the University of California, US, on developing synergies between research and industry in the life sciences. After lunch, the afternoon sessions at BioBusiness Asia 2005 separate into two tracks, therapeutics and devices, with companies from both Taiwan and abroad making presentations until the day's concluding events, the cocktail party and banquet, begin in the early evening.

BioBusiness Asia 2005 will continue on Thursday with a full program of speakers, focusing on biotech business models.

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